Americans of color moved to the right美有色人种选民右转

Americans of color have moved to the right over the past decade （Bilingual 英汉双语）有色人种选民过去十年来已经向右转移

By David Leonhardt  October 14, 2024

Good morning. We are covering a Times poll of Black and Hispanic Americans — as well as the Middle East, Russian disinformation in Africa and millennial spending habits. 

Donald Trump supporters in the South Bronx, New York.  Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

A political misdiagnosis

The Democratic Party has spent years hoping that demography would equal destiny. As the country became more racially diverse, Democrats imagined that they would become the majority party thanks to support from Asian, Black, and Hispanic voters. The politics of America, according to this vision, would start to resemble the liberal politics of California.

It is not working out that way. Instead, Americans of color have moved to the right over the past decade.

The latest New York Times/Siena College poll offers detailed evidence. The poll reached almost 1,500 Black and Hispanic Americans, far more than most surveys do. (Our poll didn't focus on Asian voters, but they have shifted, too.)

A key fact is that the rightward drift is concentrated among working-class voters, defined as those without a four-year college degree:

By The New York Times | Sources: Catalist (2016 election) and New York Times/Siena College poll (Oct. 2024)

I know that many Democrats find this pattern to be maddening. They wonder how voters of color could have moved right during the era of Donald Trump, a man with a long history of racism. But the chart above points to a partial explanation: For most Americans, race is a less significant political force than many progressives believe it is — and economic class is more significant.

Most isn't enough

The past four years have highlighted the ways that Democrats exaggerate the political importance of racial identity. Joe Biden, after all, promised to nominate the first Black female Supreme Court justice (which he did) and chose Kamala Harris as the first Black vice president — who has now succeeded him as the Democratic nominee. Yet Harris has less support from Black voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

Biden also adopted the sort of welcoming immigration policies that Democrats have long believed Hispanic voters' support. He loosened border rules early in his term, which helped millions of people enter the country. Despite that change — or maybe partly because of it — Democrats have also lost Hispanic support.

Harris is still winning most voters of color. But the Democratic Party typically needs landslide margins among these groups to win elections. Today, a significant share of them views the Democratic Party with deep skepticism — roughly one in five Black voters, two in five Hispanic voters and one in three Asian voters, polls suggest.

Elite vibes

Their skepticism is linked to class in two main ways. First, most working-class voters are frustrated with the economy, having experienced sluggish income growth for decades. (Black men have especially struggled, Charles Coleman Jr. wrote in a Times Opinion essay, and Black men have shifted right more than Black women.)

The years just before the Covid pandemic — the end of Barack Obama's presidency and the first three years of Trump's — were a happy exception, when wages rose broadly. But the inflation during Biden's presidency further angered many people. In our poll, only 21 percent of Hispanic working-class voters said that Biden's policies helped them personally, compared with 38 percent who said Trump's policies did.

More generally, many voters have come to see the Democratic Party as the party of the establishment. That may sound vague and vibesy, but it is real. Trump's disdain for the establishment appeals to dissatisfied voters of all races. As my colleague Nate Cohn points out, a sizable minority of Black and Hispanic voters think “people who are offended by Donald Trump take his words too seriously.” 

In Washington, D.C.  Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

The Democrats' second big problem is that they have wrongly imagined voters of colors to be classic progressives. In reality, the most left-wing segment of the population is heavily white, the Pew Research Center has found. While white Democrats have become even more liberal in recent decades, many working-class voters of color remain moderate to conservative.

These voters say crime is a major problem, for instance. They are uncomfortable with the speed of change on gender issues (which helps explain why Trump is running so many ads that mention high school trans athletes). On foreign policy, Black and Hispanic voters have isolationist instincts, with the Times poll showing that most believe the U.S. “should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home.”

Immigration may be the clearest example. Many voters of color are unhappy about the high immigration of the last few years. They worry about the impact on their communities and worry that new arrivals are unfairly skipping the line. In our poll, more than 40 percent of Black and Hispanic voters support “deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally back to their home countries.” Support for a border wall was similar:

By The New York Times | Source: New York Times/Siena College poll (Oct. 2024)

Multiracial similarities

The bad news for Democrats is that they adopted the wrong diagnosis of the American electorate. It is not divided neatly by race, in which people of color are overwhelmingly similar to one another and liberal. That misdiagnosis has been a gift to Republicans.

The good news for Democrats is that some of their weaknesses — with white, Hispanic, Black, and Asian voters alike — overlap. If the party can find a way to stem its losses with voters of color, it may also win back a slice of white working-class voters. Remember: Americans without a bachelor's degree still make up about 65 percent of U.S. adults. The share is even higher in swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Related: Democrats' challenges with Black and Hispanic voters have left the party more reliant on college-educated white voters and suburbanites, write my colleagues Jennifer Medina, Katie Glueck and Ruth Igielnik.

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My brief comments：

It is true that the established fake-leftist Dems have failed to continue their captivated power of monopoly in so-called support of the minorities. Their fake progressiveness spelled the colored people in the U.S. for too long, it is about time to break such a spell now.   

The Americans of color have no future of their own except that they will unite with the white non-college lower-working-class people who make up about 65 percent of U.S. adults, namely, most of the working class. As most of the working class have spoken loud and clear on to the end to support the MAGA faction led by Donald J. Trump, any hesitation means betrayal of democracy for the working-class mainstream. [Mark Wain 10/14/2024]

Translation

汉语翻译

2024 年 10 月 14 日

作者：David Leonhardt

早上好。我们正在报道《纽约时报》对黑人和西班牙裔美国人的民意调查——以及中东、俄罗斯在非洲的虚假信息和千禧一代的消费习惯。 

纽约南布朗克斯区的唐纳德·特朗普支持者。Hiroko Masuike/纽约时报

政治误诊

民主党多年来一直希望人口结构等于命运。随着这个国家的种族变得更加多元化，民主党人想象着他们会因为亚裔、黑人和西班牙裔选民的支持而成为多数党。根据这一愿景，美国的政治将开始类似于加州的自由主义政治。

事实并非如此。相反，有色人种美国人在过去十年中向右转。

最新的《纽约时报》/锡耶纳学院民意调查提供了详细的证据。这项民意调查覆盖了近 1,500 名黑人和西班牙裔美国人，远远超过大多数调查。 （我们的民意调查没有关注亚裔选民，但他们也发生了转变。）

一个关键事实是，右倾趋势集中在工薪阶层选民中，工薪阶层是指没有四年制大学学位的选民：

《纽约时报》 | 资料来源：Catalist（2016 年大选）和《纽约时报》/锡耶纳学院民意调查（2024 年 10 月）

我知道许多民主党人发现这种模式令人抓狂。他们想知道有色人种选民在唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump) 时代怎么会向右转，特朗普是一个有着长期种族主义历史的人。但上面的图表指出了部分解释：对于大多数美国人来说，种族是一种不像许多进步人士认为的那样重要的政治力量——而经济阶层更为重要。

大多数还不够

过去四年凸显了民主党夸大种族身份的政治重要性的方式。毕竟，乔·拜登曾承诺提名第一位黑人女性最高法院法官（他做到了），并选择卡马拉·哈里斯作为第一位黑人副总统——现在她已接替他成为民主党候选人。然而，哈里斯在黑人选民中的支持率低于 2016 年希拉里·克林顿。

拜登还采取了民主党长期以来认为西班牙裔选民支持的欢迎移民政策。他在任期初期放宽了边境规则，帮助数百万人进入美国。尽管发生了这种变化——或许部分原因是因为这种变化——民主党也失去了西班牙裔的支持。

哈里斯仍然赢得大多数有色人种选民的支持。但民主党通常需要在这些群体中获得压倒性优势才能赢得选举。如今，相当一部分人对民主党持深深的怀疑态度——大约五分之一的黑人选民、五分之二的西班牙裔选民和三分之一的亚裔选民，民意调查显示。

精英氛围

他们的怀疑态度主要与阶级有关，主要有两种。首先，大多数工薪阶层选民对经济感到失望，因为他们几十年来一直经历收入增长缓慢。（查尔斯·科尔曼二世在《时代》杂志的一篇观点文章中写道，黑人男性尤其挣扎，黑人男性比黑人女性更倾向于右倾。）

就在新冠疫情爆发前的几年——巴拉克·奥巴马总统任期的结束和特朗普总统任期的前三年——是一个令人高兴的例外，当时工资普遍上涨。但拜登总统任期内的通货膨胀进一步激怒了许多人。在我们的民意调查中，只有 21% 的西班牙裔工薪阶层选民表示拜登的政策对他们个人有帮助，而 38% 的人表示特朗普的政策有帮助。

更普遍地说，许多选民开始将民主党视为建制党。这听起来可能很模糊和夸张，但这是真的。特朗普对建制的蔑视吸引了所有种族的不满选民。正如我的同事 Nate Cohn 指出的那样，相当一部分黑人和西班牙裔选民认为“那些被唐纳德·特朗普冒犯的人太认真对待他的言论了。” 

华盛顿特区，蒋海云为《纽约时报》撰稿

民主党的第二大问题是，他们错误地将有色人种选民想象成典型的进步人士。事实上，皮尤研究中心发现，最左翼的人口群体主要是白人。虽然白人民主党人在近几十年来变得更加自由派，但许多有色人种的工薪阶层选民仍然保持温和到保守的立场。

例如，这些选民认为犯罪是一个主要问题。他们对性别问题的变化速度感到不安（这有助于解释为什么特朗普在广告中多次提到高中跨性别运动员）。在外交政策方面，黑人和西班牙裔选民有孤立主义的本能，《纽约时报》的民意调查显示，大多数人认为美国“应该少关注海外问题，多关注国内问题”。

移民问题可能是最明显的例子。许多有色人种选民对过去几年的高移民率感到不满。他们担心移民会对社区产生影响，担心新移民不公平地插队。在我们的民意调查中，超过 40%的黑人和西班牙裔选民支持“将非法居住在美国的移民遣返回国”。对边境墙的支持也类似：

《纽约时报》 | 来源：《纽约时报》/锡耶纳学院民意调查（2024 年 10 月）

多种族相似性

对于民主党人来说，坏消息是他们对美国选民做出了错误的诊断。它并没有按种族整齐地划分，其中有色人种彼此之间极其相似且自由。这种误诊对共和党人来说是一种礼物。

对于民主党人来说，好消息是他们的一些弱点——白人、西班牙裔、黑人和亚裔选民——是重叠的。如果该党能够找到一种方法来阻止其在有色人种选民中的损失，它也可能会赢回一部分白人工薪阶层选民。请记住：没有学士学位的美国人仍然占美国成年人的 65% 左右。在亚利桑那州、密歇根州、宾夕法尼亚州和威斯康星州等摇摆州，这一比例甚至更高。

相关：民主党在黑人和西班牙裔选民方面的挑战使得该党更加依赖受过大学教育的白人选民和郊区居民，我的同事詹妮弗·梅迪纳 (Jennifer Medina)、凯蒂·格鲁克 (Katie Glueck) 和露丝·伊吉尔尼克 (Ruth Igielnik) 写道。

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我的简短评论：确实，老牌的假左翼民主党未能继续他们所吸引的垄断权力，即所谓的支持少数族裔。他们虚假的进步性使美国的有色人种被蛊惑了太久，现在是时候打破这样的魔咒了。有色人种的美国人没有自己的未来，只能与占美国成年人约 65% 的未上大学的下层工人阶级的白人，即大多数工人阶级团结起来。由于大多数工人阶级自始至终都大声疾呼支持唐纳德·特朗普领导的 MAGA 派系，任何犹豫都意味着对工人阶级主流民主的背叛。[马克·韦恩 2024 年 10 月 14 日]